In the second week of working on our live briefs, we were advised to produce good boards in order to direct our research, and become fully immersed in the outcome we were each striving to achieve. In doing this it leads to more focused research and clear idea of how the project should develop in order to avoid going off on a tangent or for progress to seem random and unjustified.
The first mood board I created was for the live brief by "UK Greetings". In the requirements for this they were asking for a range of graphic products that would formulate a range of stationary and gifting products. An example of wrapping paper, gift bags, notebook and four card varieties was given. Because of the example given I saw the importance of how in the market place it is essential for products to have coordinating items especially in regards to gift wrap and cards. Paper chase product ranges can be an example here as the same print and graphic is used and manipulated across a variety of items which are often purchased together due to the coordinating designs. A lot of school wear and stationary also use this design feature.
For this reason my mood board focused on the colour palette I think will work effectively, and the styles and schemes that could form inspiration for the design of the graphic. In quick primary research in stationary shops I saw a common theme of each range of products being targeted to one area of the market. There seemed to be a lack of items matching in the same range but still being appropriate for different ages/ genders/ or occasions. For example the card that went alongside the gift wrap was of one design, so the wrapping paper would only seem suitable alongside this one other product. For this reason I want to start by designing a print/ pattern which will be solely for the wrap, but can have colours picked out from within it, that can be designed around to form a range of cards that will appeal to different ages and for a variety of occasions.
These colours were chosen as the fashion catwalks for 2017 seem to make use of the soft pastels, but also a more unusual, strong mustard colour. I think these colours are gentle but stylish enough to be manipulated for different schemes. As the children graphics above show, they can be used for children illustration, but then the lamp shades and bedding design show how his can be a a bit more sophisticated and appeal to a more mature audience.
(all individual image sources can be found here)
The next live brief I considered was for "BEAR nibbles" and their yoyo bars made for children. In each of these healthy snack bars there can be collectable cards included- these are often fun fact cards about animals, history or nature. The aim for the design of these cards if to be lighthearted and bright, interesting information cards that children aged 4-9years would be wanting to collect and collate.
So far the mention of how the children collect the cards has seemed to be in an album or file. However this seems quite dated to me, as this seems like the collecting and scrapbooking of top trumps or football cards, which I believe doesn't persist as strongly in someones childhood anymore.
For this reason my aim is to work towards forming some sort of physical way in which card collection is essential in order to make something of fill-in the blanks of something. Im not yet sure how this would be possible but my idea include
- a poster to stick an animal on that is retrieved from an information card
- a piece of wall art that the cards are attached to
- a cut out and fill the gaps design. With cards being perforated and the design having animal shaped gaps for the child to fit the animals where needed.
Above is my mood board for this brief. As I have less of a direction for this project yet, the mood board is less focused. However I have tried to focus on the content I could include regardless of what the overall output will be yet. The colours and scheme of a woodland adventure is presented here. I wish for the illustration to be child like as this is the age group I am designing for. The colours in relation to this will also be quite soft and more of a pastel tone, in particular I like the combination of the colours seen on the carton birds here.
(all individual image sources can be found here)
